Year: 2012

It’s a sure sign someone is losing when he demands that the rules be changed. That might explain the renewed interest in forcing people to vote against their will. Peter Orszag, President Obama’s former budget director and now a vice chairman at Citigroup, recently wrote a column for Bloomberg View arguing for making voting mandatory. […]

My best friend is a guy. We have tons in common and have conversations that are lively, honest, and deep. He’s basically everything I’ve ever wanted in my future husband, but he has an infatuation for Filipina women half his age. I’m 37, his age, and Caucasian. His plan is to find and marry a […]

Today’s groundbreaking announcement that a charity founded by Russian Jewish billionaires has established a $1 Million annual prize to honor people who attribute their success to Jewish values is the continuation of the raising profile and great influence of Russian Jews. The award, called the Genesis Prize, will be financed by an endowment of about […]

Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear a lot of words — and the meaning of those words is not always clear. So it may be helpful to have a glossary of political terms. One of the most versatile terms in the political vocabulary is “fairness.” It has been used over […]

A Boy Scouts of America national board member, James Turley, who is also global chairman and CEO of the accounting firm Ernst & Young, recently said he “will work from within to seek a change” to overturn the BSA policy that bans gay Scouts and leaders. But is Turley working on his own initiative, or […]

One advantage of defeating Barack Obama in November, apart from saving the country from financial ruin and the rest, is that conservatives will presumably be able to criticize liberal policies again without automatically being accused of racism. These charges aren’t just emanating from the fringe groups; they’re not just being uttered by radical leftist bloggers […]

If Obama loses by the landslide I have been predicting — and he will — his undoing started in June. At the end of 2011, Obama’s approval ratings rarely rose above 45 percent and occasionally dropped as low as 40% in the daily tracking polls of both Gallup (registered voters) and Rasmussen (likely voters). But, […]

If there were a Hall of Fame for political rhetoric, the phrase “social justice” would deserve a prominent place there. It has the prime virtue of political catchwords: It means many different things to many different people. In other words, if you are a politician, you can get lots of people, with different concrete ideas, […]

Politicians seem to have a special fondness for words that have two very different meanings, so we are likely to hear a lot of these kinds of words this election year. “Access” is one of those words. Politicians seem to be forever coming to the rescue of people who have been denied “access” to credit, […]

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (this was written before the decision), the Obama administration has indicated it will move forward with those parts of the unpopular law it can impose on the country. Guidebooks are helpful when going on vacation. The […]

President Barack Obama hailed the Supreme Court’s 5-3 decision Monday that struck down most of Arizona’s 2010 immigration law. In a statement released by the White House, however, the president said that he remains “concerned about the practical impact of the remaining provision of the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check […]